Fathers - Biography, Sons & Daughters - Biography
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Overview
On August 3, 1988, heavy black smoke engulfed an Oregon highway, causing a massive 23 car pile-up that claimed the lives of novelist William Wharton's thirty-six year-old daughter, Kate, her husband, Burt, and their two infant daughters. Victims of field burning, a routine agricultural practice that continues to this day, they were incinerated alive in their van. How could this be allowed to happen? And how can one ever come to terms with such a loss? In Ever After, William Wharton searches for the answers to these questions. This, his first work of nonfiction, is a gripping account of a father's grief and relentless pursuit of justice. Writing with the inspired simplicity that has won him great acclaim, he evokes the voices and thoughts of his loved ones - the living and the dead - to reconstruct and reckon with the events that changed his life forever.Editorials
Library Journal
Until August 3, 1988, novelist Wharton (Birdy, 1979, Last Lovers, LJ 4/15/91) and his close-knit family had led a rather charmed and charming life "in a kind of never-never land where nothing happens to us, only to other people." But on that terrible day, disaster struck; Wharton's oldest daughter, Kate; her husband, Bert; and their daughters, two-year-old Dayiel and eight-month-old Mia, were killed in a 23-car collision on an Oregon highway, triggered by dense smoke rolling over from nearby fields where a farmer had been burning grass stubble. In his first nonfiction work, which he terms "biography-autobiography-fiction...in the form of a documentary novel." Wharton applies the same literary techniques that made his novels so emotionally compelling to tell a powerful story of devastating loss and spiritual healing. In Part 1, he uses Kate's voice poignantly to reimagine the vibrant lives and violent deaths of a loving young family. In the next two sections, Wharton recounts his grief and anger at an accident that could have been prevented and his three-year legal battle to bring the environmental issue of field burning to trial. No happy endings here, but two spiritual epiphanies give Wharton and readers a new understanding of life and whatever lies beyond death. Highly recommended. [See profile on p. 109.-Ed.]-Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"Book Details
Published
May 1, 1998
Publisher
Newmarket Pr
Pages
256
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9781557042965